Longevity / Longevity Works When Measurement Serves the Ritual Transcript

Longevity Works When Measurement Serves the Ritual Transcript

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foreign foreign folks welcome back to the whoop podcast where we're on a mission to unlock Human Performance I'm your host will Ahmed founder and CEO of whoop we got a great guest this week Brian Johnson who I'm going to get to in half a second uh but first I want to give a big shout out to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs that just won the Super Bowl I was in the stadium for that game what a gutsy an amazing performance by Patrick a long time woop member we've been publishing some of his whoop data during the Super Bowl which to my knowledge is actually the first time in the history of the Super Bowl that that's been done and uh and Patrick Ware's uh whoop 24 7 including during games so it's pretty fascinating heart rate data uh the spoiler is that his body experienced roughly uh what a marathon would feel like for an amateur athlete and uh and there's some really interesting heart rate data to go with it okay congratulations Patrick this week I am joined by Brian Johnson entrepreneur venture capitalist writer author and the founder and CEO of Kernel I think most importantly Brian has become obsessed with slowing down the pace of Aging he's been personally following a daily regimen to increase his endurance optimizes heart health and even improve his skin all in an effort to reverse aging Brian has been able to

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to reverse aging Brian has been able to reverse his age by five years in just two years so his biological age is meaningfully decreasing he's slowed his pace of Aging by 24 percent he has 4. 8 percent body fat as measured by an MRI he's got over a hundred markers that are in the perfect range and a lot of this stems from his behaviors and habits which we get into I'll also say that he shared all of his whoop data with us and he's been able to increase his HRV by close to 20 percent in the last three months he's in the 99th percentile for Recovery data 97th percentile for Sleep data so this is someone who is looking incredibly healthy on whoop while also being a hard charging entrepreneur Brian and I discuss on the podcast his journey as an entrepreneur his sleep and Recovery data Brian's Blueprint Health Program where he takes hundreds of measurements on his body uh every quarter and really measures the effect on his organs it's quite fascinating the impact of self-destructive Behavior this was a big theme Brian actually talked about removing any notion of his own autonomy in making decisions as they relate to health he just fully follows a protocol that he set out for himself and you may find that the discipline required to do that is different than you'd perceive it

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that is different than you'd perceive it I thought it was a pretty interesting topic we get into anti-aging we talk about Society at large and the role that educators politicians and more have on wellness and we also talk a ton about whoop if you're new to whoop you can use the code will when you check out get a 60 credit on whoop accessories we just announced new pricing so you can get an annual membership for 239 dollars which is our lowest pricing ever that's all at whoop. com and without further Ado here is my conversation with Brian Johnson Brian welcome back to the woo podcast hey great to be here again so since we last spoke I feel like you've become uh you know the the leading influencer around health and wellness I don't know if that was an intentional uh pursuit or not but you've gotten a lot of uh Traction in the space I was just playing around so it's been surprising well it's uh it's been really cool to uh to read all about it and uh and to get to dive in on uh your whoop data which uh you've given us uh permission to look at I guess before we we dive into that why don't you just explain how you got so into health and wellness lately and a little bit about your background it's benefit health and wellness has been of interest to me uh since I was young I was playing High School sports a few years ago though I got my pilot's

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few years ago though I got my pilot's license and one day I was flying an airplane and I turned on the autopilot and it was stunning how well the plane could fly itself it had all these different gauges that was monitoring things outside the plane and then making these micro corrections to keep the plane uh basically motionless uh in terms of the the Tilt and yaw and uh that was very different from when I was trying to do when I was using my hands I couldn't maintain the same kind of precision and I wondered what if we could build a autopilot system for our bodies and our health that could take care of our health better than we could ourselves and that kind of started blueprint in that the measurement systems would be can we measure all organs of the body can the organs then speak independently and with that data can we reference scientific literature and then develop protocols and that's what we've done today is I've built I guess what I call my autonomous self A system that takes care of my health better than I was able by myself well we're proud that whoops a piece of that if you take a second just to think about being an entrepreneur and uh you know your amazing journey as an entrepreneur at any point in that process did you feel like you were out of shape you were stressed you're you know not prioritizing health or if you always felt like you've had Health First in building Braintree venmo that was in uh around 2010 the culture then was if you were ragged and and were sleeping

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if you were ragged and and were sleeping under your desk and would go nights without sleeping it was a badge of honor a source of Mythology and so in the entrepreneurial Community you would be rewarded socially by those kinds of behaviors and it always struck me as odd that as an entrepreneur you're an athlete of the mind I mean really in anything you do in life you're an athlete of the mind and so to impair yourself in such severe Ways by doing the self-destructive Behavior just seemed foolish and so I'm glad that the culture is starting to turn a little bit in Greater awareness that it's not seen as a badge of honor it's really seen as foolishness in that you make inferior decisions when you do that so now I'd say that the my priority has been um intensely so it was then uh back in Billy Ritchie venmo it was certainly there but not as nearly as intense it as now and it's also worth noting that you're running kernel which is a really exciting company so it's not like you you know just have an enormous amount of free time on your hands that's right I mean every moment of the day is spoken for with something so uh you know living a great example is a hard charging entrepreneur now let's get into uh blueprint and what you've actually been able to accomplish so you're developing your own anti-aging protocol right that's that's blueprint and if I look at some data from your website uh you've had a five year age reversal so this notion of your biological age uh

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so this notion of your biological age uh you've slowed your pace of Aging by 24 percent you've got perfect uh muscle and fat so that's MRI do you want to just describe what is perfect from a muscle and fat standpoint yeah we did a whole body MRI looking at muscle and fat ratios and so in in looking at data sets for optimal clinical outcomes I was in the 99th percentile for both what's your weight and your uh percent body fat 163 is my weight and 4. 7 percent this morning Hill my body fat wow you've got 50 plus perfect biomarkers what would be included in that the typical ones that most people are familiar with cholesterol triglycerides 100 plus markers that are under your chronological age so if you think about common metrics there what comes to mind one foot standing test uh VO2 max right yeah um one single wrap bench press uh distance run in a 12 minute period of time and your body runs three degrees cooler I actually hadn't heard much about this it intuitively makes sense but explain why having your body run cooler is a side a good sign part of the protocol is I'm on 25 caloric restriction so RDA for me is

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caloric restriction so RDA for me is around 2500 I consume 2 000 calories a day and as a result my body temperature just hangs out in the high nine five points or nine nine five or nine six hmm fascinating now you gave us permission to look at uh your whoop data so this is Brian versus other males born in 1977. you're in the 99. 2 percentile for recovery which you're also in the 0. 8 percent of uh recoveries which is pretty awesome frankly your sleep performance of 97 18 higher is the 18 higher than males in your age group you rank in the 98. 6 percentile uh which is pretty amazing you're in the top uh 1. 4 of sleep performance you spend almost nine and a half hours in bed that's a pretty uh remarkable statistic how did you ramp up your sleep so dramatically there's uh no single thing I do for my health is more important than sleep I mean number one it's the number I mean if if sleep is Right life is right and when it's off Everything feels worse and

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when it's off Everything feels worse and so I you know I guess as a family cultural thing for example when our bedtime arrives it doesn't matter what we're doing as a family what conversation we're having what movie we're watching it does not matter what is happening that moment strikes everyone runs to their bedrooms and we do this in a dramatic fashion in a playful way but it reminds us how seriously we take sleep and that you know how conscious existence is depends upon that night's rest and so I do the things you would expect I have a blacked out room I have temperature controlled bed I I fast for I guess it would be around 10 hours before bed and my resting heart rate needs to be around 46 to 48 I know when I get that right before I go to bed my my sleep will be great uh I wear blue like blocking glasses two hours before but I basically I'm trying to think of all the things I do I've been fine-tuning this for years and you know having uh whoop as my feedback mechanism is extremely helpful I'm trying things every single day and I now have these deep intuitions on what will won't work when I typically lay down to go to bed I usually can predict how well I'm going to sleep because I've done this you know hundreds of times sleeping and then seeing the data and so I now have these models that are pretty accurate and you've also created a lot it seems like you've isolated for a lot of variables um like even just your sleep consistency is remarkably High uh for an

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is remarkably High uh for an entrepreneur and probably for someone who has to travel from time to time if you think about uh variables you've tried that haven't really made a difference or things that you you kind of sense oh if this is this you know I'm not going to have quite as good of a sleep what comes to mind I'll tell you a few things that cause negative results in sleep if I eat certain foods like heavy carbohydrates I never do but when I have in the past like any breads or pastas that will result in decreased performance if I eat too closely to bedtime that will as well if I don't have a one hour or so wind down period to get my brain in some kind of stabilized state where it's weren't out of the loops of the dailies activities that will also be negative when I try new therapies I'm always doing something new at blueprint and sometimes the first the second time I do a therapy it will have disruption in my HRV and sleep and so yeah there are a few things I watch out for and I try to control for as many as I can what would be a an example of a therapy I mean for example I I was I tried a new product this week that was using electromagnetism to induce better sleep that sat just below the pillow and I did it was a 60 Minute go to sleep thing and I did for 20 minutes and I woke up 30 minutes later I had a headache and that night I think my deep was something like an hour 20 versus you know they're on two where it should be

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know they're on two where it should be um I've tried that pillow product actually two two people who are crazy enough to try that I didn't have good results either um yeah so sometimes it's a initial result and then I can if I level set over a few days but yeah so something like that but it's nice you know I have this feedback device where I can fill it in the morning but then the data confirms what I'm feeling is is right I imagine you've gotten quite good at feeling uh what's happened to your body uh but what are examples where you've been like a little surprised almost by the results I've been working on my HRV for quite some time now almost doubling it since I started blueprint and uh recently in the past few weeks I've been using theta waves so I just listened to the theta waves for a half hour before bed that's dramatically improved my HRV surprisingly just putting on headphones and listening to this before I go to bed so and what exactly is that it's a video on YouTube it's Theta frequency and I forget I exactly I forget how we discovered this but it's had a sustain had an initial Spike of my HIV and it's sustained increase of HRV and you know we've been trying everything for HIV we've we do the vagal nerve stem uh like five or six different devices and you know caloric restriction also has improved it so we maybe have like 10 or 15 attempts now at improving HRV and cycling through this one is now a few

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cycling through this one is now a few weeks strong still going so these surprising interventions well we'll include that one in the uh in the show notes and when folks when Brian says he's tried everything you can trust that he's trying everything well I've got the data here actually to back this up so your HRV has risen from 43 to roughly 51 in the last three months uh which is you know about a 20 increase so that's a big deal uh and it also looks like your REM sleep has improved about 20 over uh a similar time frame uh what do you think is is driving that I'm uncertain on the rim I would say that the you know what it could also be the Theta sleep is just higher quality yeah yeah it could be that yeah when I first started I think my earliest whoop data I think my HRV was hovering in the mid to low 30s yeah which is you know a lot of these things are somewhat genetic but going from 30 to you know 50 plus is a huge increase and I think people underestimate as you get older just in general your HRV naturally declines so if you can actually make it go up that's a that's another hugely reinforcing perspective on anti-aging you know I'd say if you looked at my stats initially when I started gathering

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stats initially when I started gathering this on a daily basis it looks like a profile of of an entrepreneur like a you know a hard grinding um stressed out person uh so it's just taking some time to reconfigure that what would you say uh has been the sacrifice of some of this progress I would flip it flip that question and say what expansions have I experienced in life because of it this is I like to refer to myself as a professional Rejuvenation athlete and when someone looks at how LeBron James is his daily regimen of exercise and taking care of his body in his sleep not many people are making the observations that he's crazy or that you know he must be poorly sacrificing things in life I mean he's devoted himself to becoming excellent at his profession it's just in the frame of when you say okay this person is an everyday person therefore the Norms that we'd apply to them are this and he does that therefore it's weird but if you apply that I'm a professional Rejuvenation athlete then you understand my part of my lifestyle may be structured to achieve those objectives and so uh weirdly I'd say most people will like they look at me and they look at this thing and they immediately go in their mind of all the things I potentially lose in life and all the things that they would lose in life like you can't have a bagel for breakfast and your wine with friends

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for breakfast and your wine with friends and blank they they think it's a um I must be miserable I must have severe loss of all things of joy and my life it might the reality has been the exact opposite I've never experienced more joy I've never been happier I've never been more fulfilled I've never had better social environments I've never had better friends so it's been entirely expansive to me it's not been a loss at all well it's a really helpful framing I mean the the reason that I think it can be helpful to free to to all to introduce the notion of sacrifice is that for people to make a transition like the one you've made they have to make changes and there's going to be things that they previously enjoyed yes there's a new path to Enlightenment that you're describing right but there was you know there was probably things in a person's life maybe it's drinking beer while watching a football game you know maybe it's uh staying up late and watching a movie like there's things like that that someone previously enjoyed that you're suggesting if you can meaningfully shift you'll come to a new form of Enlightenment that'll make you happier exactly it's like monkey bars so you've got your hands on two different bars you let go of one bar and you need to reach out and grab the next bar now monkey bars are easier because you can see what the target of the next bar is but oftentimes in life with something like

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oftentimes in life with something like this you don't know what's going to replace your current sources of stimulation and joy and so like you're saying if it's a beer and watching football it's very hard to let go of that that rung and reach out to the next one you don't know it's going to replace it so it's really just this fear of loss and not knowing where your source of joy is going to be but I can tell you my source it's it is better being on this side of the equation than the other if you think about the uh the blueprint program for a second blueprint method what are what like what would be you know sort of a general summary for people who haven't uh who haven't had a chance to research it it's the idea that the Fountain of Youth is a story as old as humanity and typically it's people in a boat in the jungle traveling to a temple to drink in a magic Elixir and what I wanted to propose was is the Fountain of Youth here right now is just hiding in tens of thousands of scientific Publications and a lot of really hard work and so my my team and I there's 30 of us on this team we've scoured all the literature not all like we've scoured the literature we think is relevant to this project and we've assessed what we think The Highest Potential interventions are and then I've agreed that I'm going to elevate all the organs of my body as they're measured through every measurement modality clinical grade Protocols are created and then I follow it with perfection and so it's a system of measurement science and protocol that runs my body

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science and protocol that runs my body not my brain so I'm not reading blog posts I'm not listening to the latest advice on blink it is a system of scientific discovery and so this first phase has really been about how dramatically can we slow the rate of aging and that's like you mentioned it's it's been 28 percent uh that I've slowed how fast I age as a result of my epigenetic age was reversed 5. 1 years like all these other things happened as a result but my I achieved near perfect health in these Optical clinical algorithms phase two of blueprint is going to be reversing the Aging damage that has happened and so we haven't even got to age reversal yet in our Endeavor it's just been the reductions we've seen have been a result of trying to slow down the rate of aging and so I think really the summary of blueprint is the science of slowing aging and reversing the Amy aging damage that has happened is here right now it's just hiding in Publications and in extremely rigorous protocols but as a society it's extremely exciting that it's here it's not somewhere in the distance future and something that we have to wait for it's here right now what are some of the protocols that go with it so you mentioned measuring all of your organs for example like what does that process look like we take hundreds of measurements every 90 days and that's the ones you would expect blood Slava stool you're an MRI ultrasound fitness test DNA methylation microbiome we test everything we can

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microbiome we test everything we can that we can map to evidence-based medicine so everything is looking at Gold Standard scientific evidence in the beginning clinical grade protocol but yeah I mean I I get poked and prodded and imaged and tested all day every day and so we're and I publish all my data so this is we're not saying that blueprint is the only way this can be done uh people can maybe do a better job than what we've done it's simply trying to demonstrate a process of the measurement evidence protocol process and how long have you been doing it for two years so in those two years what would be a few areas where you've seen the most dramatic improvements I mean generally speaking I've never felt better in my entire life I was accustomed as an entrepreneur to the Peaks and valleys of Life great days terrible days and now my life is extremely consistent and stable I rarely feel emotional arousal I rarely get upset over anything so I just say the stability of my life is dramatically improved versus the whipsaw I was on before my body I can compete with my boys my 17 or 19 year old on the basketball court or trail running or whatever uh I'm right there with them in every physical form which is amazing I have zero aches and pains not a single thing in my body hurts my sleep is uh

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hurts my sleep is uh wonderfully restorative I wake up every day feeling energetic and great I just I never really I never thought I could feel this good in life do you uh do you drink coffee I don't I have a few Cups of Tea a day and they'll have caffeine in them yeah so it's about 60 milligrams of caffeine per day from a uh a green tea concoction you measured uh you mentioned not feel not getting upset and I'm curious uh if you've introduced some type of meditation or breathing techniques as part of this process yeah I do I I do have breath work and I've kind of incorporated into my daily life like I'll stop throughout the day maybe five to ten times and breathe for two or three minutes and again this is what Loop has really helped me I just I pull up my heart rate and I can control very I mean with great accuracy where I'm going up and down and so being able to pull it open and just watch it go down has really helped me calm myself throughout the day I mean yesterday for example I was with some friends and we were driving and um I did something that perturbed the person behind me I don't know what I did but they immediately accelerated and got inches away from hitting the back of my car they had a nice car and then he's swerving around me flips me off like he just went into this absolute fit and if uh I guess it was such a sober moment for me because I thought this is

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for me because I thought this is unbelievable that we as humans like we explode in this emotional anger over the slightest slight on the road and like we imperil two people to their death and these cars like you know they're so expensive and uh I don't know just it made me reflect a lot on our emotional stability as a species you know of how it's wild and I I felt this I know this I mean it's not really an issue in my life now but uh really caught me in the moment of sobriety of just realizing how Wild our emotions are and turbulent they are I mean I imagine that the there's got to be some filtering as well of your relationships over the past two years just just listening to you talk about how stable you feel and also how how sensitive in some ways you may be to uh other people who aren't like have you found that you've had to do a little bit of filtering with the way you know with your relationships and maybe weed some people out I mean even going back to Braintree I guess the culture has been inspired by Ernest Shackleton the culture of the team has always been something that I've cared about the very most in building teams and we've always had uh extraordinary people low drama low politics low back biting just a group of extraordinary people trying to do something very hard where 99 of the attention is focused on the

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99 of the attention is focused on the task and one percent on the other peripheral stuff behind the scenes but I'd say that's really how I've built the majority of my life that I just don't have high drama High politic people in my life it's just not uh where I'm at it it doesn't suit me well and what's your family life like married kids uh yep I have one son living with me he's 17 he's finishing his senior year and uh we're best friends we do everything together we pal around and uh it's such a rewarding experience to uh for him to be growing up in this time and place and so I just cherish that relationship more than anything I've got a 19 year old son who's at college and then a 13 year old daughter Middle School she's with her mother got it and and do you find that they are as equally excited about sleep and good habits as you are like I mean how have you been able in a way if you can figure out how to teach your kids to to get bought into this maybe there's a lesson for the rest of society I'll tell you the most effective thing I've done with the kids because for years for example I tried to get them to wear sunscreen and they would always just blow me off and so I have this device in at the house in the clinic it does multi-spectral Imaging so it gives you you know 10 or so data points on your

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you know 10 or so data points on your face UV spots Brown Reds you know pore size Etc and when you get in there your face you look like a zombie because it shows you these things you can't see with the naked eye and it reveals damage sun damage and so I had my children do this and they saw all the damage on their face from the Sun that they couldn't otherwise see from their plump uh you know faces and they were terrified and now they were sunscreen so the fastest way to get them to change their behavior has been through measurement showing them what the effect is on their body when they do a certain thing well it's funny the most common messages I get about Wooper from people where the product has improved their life directly but the second most common messages I get are from parents who have their kids on whoop and they're like you wouldn't believe this my son now goes to bed early I don't have to talk to him about it so it's very funny yeah anytime I mean our data you know all of my children have whoop devices so uh and some are better than others are wearing them my 17 year old is like me but it is a common conversational Topic in the house you know what was your recovery what was your deep what was your resting heart rate was your HRV and we pattern match it to our lifestyles what we do together so it is absolutely a common language that just it captures our life in ways that we're both we both care about do your kids have high hrvs I will say that we have a team

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I will say that we have a team and I'm I regularly beat them on several things very political answer yeah it's interesting like I've found that that uh teenagers often teenagers who play sports just genetically have higher hrvs I think it's something about being that young but uh sounds like you're you're in the mix with them have you ever tried wearing uh blue light blocking glasses before bed I do it daily yeah how long do you wear them before bed two hours yeah we're in the same camp on that one that for me uh was the single biggest game changer for uh sleep in recovery and uh I became so obsessed with them it's in part why whoop now has our own blue light blockers because I figured we could design them better and I wanted to be able to control exactly the amount of blue light that we blocked a red filter oh I'm gonna send you a pair okay please I'm bummed you're not using the whoop ones by the way yeah yeah we came out with them uh a few months ago and they actually sold out but uh I'll send you a batch uh and those for for those listening part of the reason blue light blocking glasses are so valuable is that uh if you're looking at screens before bed that could be a television set that could be a cell phone uh it's emitting blue light and the blue light to simplify the equation stimulates your

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simplify the equation stimulates your brain to be awake and so if you can wear blue light blocking glasses uh it's like a get a jail free card for looking at screens and it naturally makes you sleepier is that fair Brian that's fair yeah I I never deviate from one of those the routine is locked in yep and I I wouldn't uh it's now so a part of the routine it's just six o'clock it goes on now do you find that your uh uh you like you don't travel anymore or you know you'd have to decline a lot of I don't know dinner parties or certain social Gatherings because they disrupt the the regimented routine that you're on I have a much higher bar for what a what will get me out of the house yeah and so I'd say so I've also started to shift things two other times so I've been hosting blueprint brunches I call it the first supper and so we get together we talk about health and wellness and the future of Being Human I think there's this really interesting conversation if we really zoom out on planet Earth and say what is really happening and what is this moment in time like every generation has their opportunity to do something that defines the future uh generations and I think now is aging is one of them uh slowing the rate of aging and reversing aging and in doing that rethinking ourselves and so I I like the you know companies like yours that are building these closed-loop systems that enable humans to intuitively and with

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intuitively and with data build themselves into a better life and then take baby steps and do it further and further but I do think there's a special moment in time we're out right now uh that we can map a different potential a different uh Horizon of human potential than has ever been possible before and so I think in in doing that social events take on a different meeting to me uh you know going out and doing certain things or it really is about this larger objective of what we can become as a species I think you're absolutely right and uh and certainly my perspective on it through woop is the fact that we now have sensing and Computing at a level that you can continuously measure the body 24 7 and very quickly figure out the status of an individual or what's working for them or what they need to change about their lifestyle their behaviors I do Wonder though if you fast forward like are you almost looking at two very distinct populations amongst the amongst Humanity where you have one population that is pushing a hundred and kind of accelerating past right and if you were to look at call it that percentage of humanity maybe it's five or ten percent of humanity as a on a percentage basis their age is so much older than the prior top five or ten percent right so you're like pulling this this top end of of society up like if you keep doing what you're doing and borrowing no accidents like I think

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borrowing no accidents like I think there's a legitimate case to be made you could live to be 120 or something like that but on the flip side you also have all these indicators that uh are incredibly negative right like uh we can blame this in part on covid but for the first time in about 40 years life expectancy declined in the United States over the past two years uh you do see obesity increasing uh you see cardiovascular disease increasing you know what do you make of this do you agree with the way I'm thinking about it or do you think there's potential to pick all of society up and bring everyone along for this age reversal I like to think about this in in terms of self-destructive behaviors so every day when we navigate the world we need to in driving to work we need to pass McDonald's and Starbucks that has the sugar drinks and you know 50 other possible Temptations of engaging in some kind of self-destructive Behavior food that we know is not going to be good for us it's going to lead to bad things and then we need to navigate uh social media algorithms Tick Tock and others then we need to navigate uh streaming later to the night and then drinking with friends and then late nights without friends the we have a culture of self-destructive Behavior

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a culture of self-destructive Behavior that is cheered on by our social norms and it's people looking for arousal in the forms of food and how you know digital algorithms and whatever else and I don't know how to measure this but if you say on the time scales of human history how much self-destructive behaviors being committed on a daily basis by the human race and is it potentially higher than it ever has been just because it's never been easier to engage in these behaviors and they have never been more powerfully addictive which goes back to the first of our conversation when some someone looked at me and they say oh man you must be miserable that's a defense mechanism of saying I'm not sure if I want to move my hand from this this rung of the monkey bar to the next one because I don't know where what I can grab a hold to that's going to give me my form of pleasure and so to me it really is a defining attribute of our time is how addicted we are as a society to these self-destructive behaviors and it's invisible to us because we celebrate it and endorse it by and by ostracizing people who don't participate in it like me and I actually saw that like you know as you came out with blueprint and you know my gut reaction if you had told me hey Will I've come up with blueprint I'm really focused on longevity uh as someone who's been in the space for like over a decade I would think that'll be generally received warmly or it'll

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generally received warmly or it'll generally be received by people who are interested in it or curious in it but I think you're you saw a lot of media backlash am I right like maybe talk a little bit about that yeah this is this was really a I was just messing around with blueprint when I started it was like this open question where are we with the Fountain of Youth and I started blogging about it publicly and I started sharing all my data I'm like hey here's what I'm doing here's what I'm trying out and then this article just blew up and it was like it had a hundred kilotons of raw energy underneath it and it lit and it just blew up in every direction and so yeah the amount of vitriol and hate was Unreal and to be clear I loved every second of it uh like you know the the hate makes me so happy uh all the blowback made me happy it was such a beautiful thing and um it it's not I mean it certainly uh I was a part of the conversation but I think what's really happening there's a lot of internal dialogue going on with people and they're just saying it out loud and using me as the foil but this is very deeply interwoven in people's psyche and Society is a psyche so the conversation is not so much about me it's about society and each person inside their own head when you say you loved it what what did you love about it like it just gave you a sense like a a sense of resolve and a

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a sense like a a sense of resolve and a sense of uh energy for what you're doing it makes me laugh I mean I find it so funny I mean it's like for example when I hear people say uh they don't dare look at the comments section you know on a video on YouTube because the comment section is typically brutal I mean don't we all have a comments an equal comment section in our brains about our own selves like don't we walk away from interactions and say I can't believe I said this or I shouldn't have said that or I was so bad at this I mean aren't we doing the same thing to ourselves all the time and it's just a macro phenomena of what we already experienced and so to me this is just how it's a beautiful mapping of the craziness of Being Human what was the the rudest thing someone said I actually made a list my team and I went around the internet and we found the sharpest insults and like some of these like you could tell people put a lot of effort into like constructing the most hurtful possible thing and I put a list together and I shared all of them um I'm trying to think of some good ones there were some pretty good zingers I mean a lot of people uh they'll comment on my appearance you know saying I look like a vampire or even recently an elf from The Lord of the Rings [Music] [Music] um I need to think I need to go through the list there were some pretty good zingers in there okay well you know the cultural piece that you talked about eloquently

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talked about eloquently I think ring is true I mean the if someone's really going to attack you for this way of life they're also saying to themselves that they have to have certain things that you're not you're now not doing and so it is an internal dialogue happening out loud or on Twitter or wherever a lot of these comments are surfacing and you know the way you're living is very disruptive right in in the from a cultural standpoint you're you're saying I don't need all of these things I don't need these little chocolates I don't need these types of meals I don't need uh a disruptive bedtime for social activities I don't need alcohol I don't need uh smoking I don't need uh you know all these different things and instead actually I'm going to use my free time to enhance a lot of aspects of my body I mean people are reacting to the fact that they're not spending any time enhancing their body and in fact when they get free time they're going to lean into a district you know what you are now defining as a destructive experience so your your way of life is uh they find very threatening I imagine yeah this and to be clear the expectation of blueprint is not that people are going to do what I do it's hard and they don't have the infrastructure I do so it's an unfair

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infrastructure I do so it's an unfair situation what I'm trying to point out is the insanity of our current society and specifically it is unfair for us to imagine an individual being able to navigate the terrain of self-destructive addictions they get thrown them on a daily basis and expect them to be able to somehow win in this Gauntlet it is crazy we cannot expect people to survive the addictive tender The Addictive things they hit get hit on them every single day and so we need to approach this blueprint needs to be enabled by default in society it just needs to be the norm and so this is the interesting thing I posed this question at these blueprint brunches is I posed a thought experiment imagine if a system you could sign up for a system that was personalized to you and it would take care of you entirely like you just have to say yes and saying yes means you have to follow the protocol which means you go to bed when the protocol says you eat the foods the protocol says you just abide by it generally now there's me some trade-offs you're gonna have to make in life but in exchange you get you know as perfect health as you could potentially achieve so a system takes better care of you than you're able to would you say yes to that deal and this is where we're going I mean I've proven it with myself is my system does in fact do a better job taking care of me than I'm able by myself and so it is expensive right now and it's going to come down on the cost curve but eventually it's going to get to a

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eventually it's going to get to a society like we're all going to face this question do we say yes to this now like you can take that in a dystopic way you can take that in a utopic way uh there's so many follow-on conversations but the basic principle is true is algorithmic abilities increasingly get better and it taking care of our health and wellness is a very natural step it's an obvious step it's an inevitable step and I've just proven it out to show proof of concept yeah I love the way you're you're describing it and just the the general openness you also have to the rejection of it we haven't talked that much about diet which I imagine is a big uh component uh and I've got some notes Here on it but why don't you describe uh what your diet looks like today it's caloric restriction so that means uh 25 less than my RDA so 2 000 calories a day it's uh three meals a day from 6 a. m to about 11 A. M so I ended roughly a five to six hour window and it's for uh breakfast I have a few pounds of vegetables broccoli cauliflower ginger garlic lentils black lentils and then I have a mid-morning I have a pudding which is macadamia nuts walnuts flax seeds pomegranate seeds berries sunflower Leach and cinnamon and then a third meal a day which is vegetable berries nuts and seeds and so it's it's vegan by choice I mean certainly it is not say anything about meat other than this can be done on a

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meat other than this can be done on a vegan diet uh others could potentially do their own version and then I take 104 supplements and so the objective with this is uh again the algorithm of how do you if you measure every organ of the body and you inquire of every organ what do you need to be ideal and then it outputs its needs list by sharing the data you know in terms of imagery or function and then we take all the inputs of food and supplements and we try to create that perfect diet and so it's entirely a close-up system that is fed on data so the supplements vary based on the results that's right and how dramatically do they vary like when you go from taking a lot of one to zero of it at this point it's fine-tuned and that's why I share I mean I've spent millions of dollars building this and I share all of it for at no cost with everybody anybody can Implement blueprint and I share all the recipes all the supplements in fact since this is uh you know exploded nobody can buy stuff anymore like everyone's sold out for months of everything and so it's kind of frustrating but yeah it's pretty stable and fine-tuned at this point is it possible for you to pinpoint some of the key supplements that you feel like made like if you could only have five of the hundred would it be easy for you to pick those five yep people off I mean that's a great

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yep people off I mean that's a great question and people are wisely looking for power laws and when they start going into this conversation my mind immediately goes to okay if you are expressing an interest in doing something number one stop self-destructive Behavior there's no better thing you can do for your health than stopping self-destructive Behavior because we know this we go to the gym we do well and then afternoon comes we're like you know I worked out this morning I'll have a second helping or I'll have this dessert because I worked out this morning like it it leads to these kind of behaviors so one stop the self-destructive Behavior prioritize sleep you know do something about exercise and eat more vegetables berries and nuts but oftentimes I find that people want to get into these highly technical debates NR versus nmn or this supplement for that supplement meanwhile uh they're syncing with the self-destructive Behavior not getting sleep and so it's better to focus the attention on getting the basics right than someone trying to soothe their own suffering by feeling like they're doing something by taking the supplement it sometimes leads to worse outcomes well I appreciate the way you're framing this because the headline is 102 supplements but what you're essentially saying is that's kind of an afterthought if you don't you know if you don't nail sleep exercise and diet that's right if we take a uh a different direction for this conversation what do you like what do you feel is

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what do you like what do you feel is society's role the government's role like in better education um around health and well-being I mean even as you were just describing your diet I was thinking about how up that food pyramid is you know and I'm sure you've looked at this maybe you can even describe that for our audience but just the way that like there's just been so much misinformation around what's good for you and what's bad for you it I mean we are I think there's a sport of complaining about politicians and their worthlessness but aren't politicians just a mirror to us aren't they just showing us back in our own Reflections and so aren't they enacting the policies that we are responsive to and if that's the case then what does it say about us you know and that we we are creating the same problem we're complaining about and in doing this myself and trying to solve my own problem of self-destructive behaviors uh it was very counter-intuitive because the solution was to remove my mind as the problem solver so I know when my mind gets engaged of looking at a menu trying to decide what to eat or go into the pantry and perusing or going to the grocery store my mind is so prone to selecting self-destructive behaviors it's it's power is uncheckable right it's like it's always doing bad things and so when I agreed to to a blueprint it was um I agree my mind no

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blueprint it was um I agree my mind no longer has Authority because I know when my mind does it's going to make the wrong decision more than half the time easily if not you know higher bounds there and so I remove my mind as a problem-solving thing so your question how do we think about this as a society and government and the government's recommendations I would say the human mind is potentially the biggest stumbling block to the human race the exact thing which we think is meant to solve all of our problems maybe the thing causing all of our problems and I've proven that with myself like I I had this goal alignment problem within Brian I had my I was balkanized and at war with myself inside of me with all my organs and once I was able to allow them to speak and to then do goal alignment with the self I achieved World Peace inside of me and that's the first time in my entire life I'd done that versus my mind being the tyrannical force of authority jamming itself around all over the place and so to me it really is I don't think there's any like simple policy or changing the food pyramid or this politician doing that thing it's I think it is uh genuinely a moment in time where we can reconsider ourselves the species and imagine things we've never done before well it was a really beautiful way you describe that because in in a sense like I'm listening to you and I'm reading about you and I'm thinking to myself

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thinking to myself you know he has this enormous discipline but the way you're framing it it's almost like you've just turned off uh you know an aspect of your own autonomy and you're just following now the script and that's taking you to the promised land exactly right and it's there's a fascinating I mean there's a fascinating fascinating psychology in that so I mean like I If you wanted to experiment yourself like I had my biggest issue was nighttime Brian from 5 PM to 10 p. m that version of Brian was an absolute Rascal so the day would come to an end I would feel the stresses of being a Founder entrepreneur I would you know have a fight with the partner have to put in bathing the kids and putting them to bed and then all the stresses of whatever's happening in life and then I would be feeling yeah right we know this feeling like we're feeling awful and I would try to soothe my pain with food and overeat eat the wrong kind of stuff until I was sick and I couldn't stop my behavior it was just I was out of control no matter what I tried I couldn't stop it and so I playfully one day said evening Brian you're fired like you are no longer authorized to eat food no matter the situation doesn't matter if it's a birthday party your kids party a special occasion it doesn't matter you cannot eat food anymore because you have shown to be totally unreliable and you ruin life for everyone else morning Brian sleep Brian everyone else is miserable because of

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everyone else is miserable because of you and what I saw on a daily basis is when 5 PM rolled around evening Brian would show up like hey everyone I'm here how about just today what about just a little bit what about let's just test this one little experiment and I got to see him in action and I would say no Ethan Brian you are destructive you're manipulative you're just you're a monster you know and I'd watch in my mind or watch him fall on the floor and throw a tantrum and punch a hole in the wall he would be so offended because his authority was revoked but having this internal dialogue of realizing all this chaos that was happening inside of me uh was so Illuminating and so I've then deconstruct the rest of myself and so if you want to see yourself like try to take that introspective approach and watch yourself in action it's a really interesting movie well Behavior change is something we think a lot about at whoop and I'm often asked oh how did you begin X habit uh people ask me a lot about meditating because I've done it for a while and I I always say like do it every day and in some ways my because people like well could I start three times a week and I say if you do it every day it's not a choice right and if you have to have choice in the matter it actually makes it harder and in a lot of ways what you're describing is a very extreme version of that uh I'm curious

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that uh I'm curious was there a step in between you know removing all autonomy uh was there some form that like was there some uh maybe more of a discipline oriented muscle that you tried to flex into this and then realized no I just have to remove all autonomy yeah the first step was identifying the worst version of myself which was evening Brian and then mapping out a specific plan so this you name the person you identify when they show up you identify all of their arguments and then you identify the rebuttals you're going to say you just read through the script and you need to build the intuition and power over time because you're going to lose the argument sometimes like even though you know evening Brian's going to show up and they start you know he starts putting forth his arguments you're going to lose initially a few times you're like okay let's do your experiment maybe it's going to work and so once you tackle that portion then it's just taking these small building uh baby steps into building up the scaffolding and so just a win or two a day and get you enough momentum where you can finally to a point and be like you know what I'm good this whole thing is mapped out into a system I fully realize that every time I give myself freedom of choice in these situations I'm more likely to lose than not and what's been interesting about this whole pattern is I now uh the idea of eating uh fast food junk

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uh the idea of eating uh fast food junk food bad food is repulsive to me I it's so people oftentimes ask you are you do you get a cheat day do you want a cheat day how do you stop I don't want to do it it sounds awful to me yeah and that's being fully on the other side I get it I think there's a lot of really interesting psychology behind what you're doing as well and in terms of thinking about destructive experiences thinking about your own relationship with yourself and autonomy uh but I mean overall uh I love that you're putting all this out there uh it's awesome that you're on whoop in the process so big fan of that anything uh anything you want to leave us with like where where can people find uh more information about you and blueprint yeah I would say that the final thought I'd have is you know the community that you guys have built at woop is a unique opportunity and that I would imagine the characteristics of people who wear your devices are those who are generally more disciplined they're interested in well-being like they they're bringing their a game to life that's not true I mean uh life is very hard and many people are in difficult circumstances I would imagine you have this this interesting group of people and if we're posing this question you know uh in parallel to humans we're building this new form of intelligence in in AI that is improving at a

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in in AI that is improving at a staggering rate and if we say how could we put humans on a growth curve that is compounding because our our growth curves are very different like we we make the same mistake thousands of times in our life which is weird as a you know the most intelligent species in the planet that's crazy we do that and so what's interesting to me about whoop is if we really start at your community as if we really begin imagining what is possible to human race you've got a group of people that if we built the closed-loop system of improvement where they were no longer committing self-harm and these protocols could be implemented at the speed of scientific discovery in real time You're Building uh the next version of human in real time at a rate that is compounded and even if we can't expect everyone to do that that's just not realistic in society but if we can show it's possible and show proof of concept and paint the excitement that then gives the willpower to rebuild society around these new Norms because humans are incredibly good at Norm keeping if the norm is to go to bed at the same time if you get social rewarded for going to bed at the same time or eating your vegetables people are really good at that it's just when the non-norms which are hard and so I guess I like what you're doing will uh at woop and I hope that we can provide proof of concept demonstrations that will begin to change what we want to Aspire to because really

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what we want to Aspire to because really you know with our generation in the early 21st century what do we aspire to as a species we just we haven't answered that question and it's high time we do it's right there in front of our face and we can pose it and we can start making our answers well thank you for that and you know it's interesting to think about uh how whoop has changed people's behaviors against destructive experiences the most profound one of the most profound things is around alcohol where we just see a massive reduction of alcohol consumption from people on whoop and that's not us like screaming at people don't drink alcohol uh although you know there are some recommendations it's just they people see it in their whoop data and that is a meaningful enough nudge to say okay I'm gonna drink a little less tonight or I'm gonna drink a little less this week and uh and there's other examples but as I was listening to you talk about the whoop community and this idea of just accelerating uh the curve towards longevity I think there's going to be so many uh so many opportunities and even how we think about adding new features and new software and new insights uh has a huge eye towards that yeah so Brian thank you so much uh for coming on uh the wood podcast quickly uh tell us where people can find information on blueprint yeah at blueprint. brienjohnson. com all

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yeah at blueprint. brienjohnson. com all the information is there for you to follow and make your own improvements and then I hang out primarily on Twitter what's your Twitter handle uh Brian underscore Johnson great well we'll put all of that in the show notes Brian thank you so much for being on whoop and for coming on the podcast yeah and thank you guys for building a great product thanks brother thank you to Brian Johnson for coming on the podcast giving us that lens into the blueprint program and his insights on longevity and aging if you enjoyed this episode of the wood podcast please leave a rating or review check us out on social at whoop at will Ahmed if you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcast. com call us 508-443 - 4952 and with that stay healthy and stay in the green [Music]